Designing a Sustainable and Resilient Gasoline Supply Chain Network under Uncertainty (Case study: Gasoline Supply Chain Network of Khorasan Razavi Province)

Today, extensive political, economic, social, and environmental challenges have made designing the gas supply chain network one of the biggest concerns of governments, local states, and global companies. Due to the development of global regulations about environmental concerns, important issues such as sustainability and resilience are needed to be considered in building up supply chain networks. The purpose of this study is to present a mathematical model of a three-echelon gasoline supply chain network, as well as to consider sustainability and resilience approaches.

This is a fundamental and applied study. The mathematical model developed in this research is a two-stage scenario-based multi-objective stochastic one that considers the risks of chain disruption in the form of stochastic scenarios. The disruption considered in this study included supply disruption due to disruption of refinery production capacity, reduction of gasoline imports due to political pressures, disruption of storage facilities, and a demand surge in some customer zones. In order to find robust solutions against scenarios, the Aghezzaf robust optimization method was used, and to find efficient solutions. The Torabi-Hosseini approach was applied to the multi-objective model.

Some of the most important findings of the present study were the quantification of sustainability measures, including the cost of network establishment, environmental effects of CO2 emissions due to the gasoline production and transmission in the network, and the social effects of the network development on the job opportunities, while improving the economic conditions of local areas. The development of a quantitative approach to optimizing various dimensions of the network resilience, including design quality besides the proactive-reactive capabilities against these disturbances were the other finding of this study. Proactive capabilities encompass the establishment of backup storage facilities in critical nodes of the chain and devising backup links for transporting gasoline from backup refineries to the disrupted facilities. In addition, fortification of critical facilities to be operable in the face of disruptions was another proactive option considered in the proposed mathematical model. Reactive capabilities included planning the recovery of disrupted storage tanks and gasoline pipelines.

The proposed model, that quantitatively optimizes all three aspects of sustainability, i.e., economic, social, and environmental, in the gasoline supply chain network, strengthens the network resilience against disruption. Besides, the applicability and efficiency of the proposed approach were shown through a real case study of the gasoline supply chain network design problem in the Khorasan Razavi province of Iran. The obtained results showed that the cost reduction in the whole network along with sustainability and resilience achievements were made in comparison with the current condition of the gasoline supply chain in Khorasan Razavi.